ï‚Dirk hurried on, opening the newspaper at the horoscope page as he did so. "Virtually everything you decide today will be wrong," it said bluntly. Dirk slapped the paper shut with a grunt. He did not for a second hold with the notion that great whirling lumps of rock light years away knew something about your day that you didn't. It just so happened that "The Great Zaganza" was an old friend of his who knew when Dirk's birthday was, and always wrote his column deliberately to wind him up. The paper's circulation had dropped by nearly a twelfth since he had taken over doing the horoscope, and only Dirk and The Great Zaganza knew why.ï3Douglas Adams, "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul"ïYou will hurt your foot.ï/fortune cookie in "Good as Gold", Joseph HellerïýSir Pom-pom, despite Madouc's glare of annoyance, stepped forward. "Dame Fairy of the Silver Eyes: allow me to put you a question, which is this: where should I seek the Holy Grail?" "Determine its location and go to that spot; that is my wise advice."ïJack Vance, "Madouc"ïiAnyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.ï:Douglas Adams, "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"ïThe system software for COMAL 80 is likely to occupy a substantial amount of main memory and this suggests that systems with rather more than 32K bytes of main memory are needed. Some of this may be of the "Read only" (ROM) type but the total should be not too far short of 64K.ï1Roy Atherton, "Structured Programming With Comal"ï–The seven eyes of Ningauble the Wizard floated back to his hood as he reported to Fafhrd: "I have seen much, yet cannot explain all. The Gray Mouser is exactly twenty-five feet below the deepest cellar in the palace of Glipkerio Kistomerces. Even though twenty-four parts in twenty-five of him are dead, _he_ is alive. "Now about Lankhmar. She's been invaded, her walls breached everywhere and desperate fighting is going on in the streets, by a fierce host which outnumbers Lankhmar's inhabitants by fifty to one - and equipped with all modern weapons. Yet you can save the city." "How?" demanded Fafhrd. Ningauble shrugged. "You're a hero. You should know."ï&Fritz Leiber, "The Swords of Lankhmar"ï/"That's a lot of nonsense," said Harry. "I can prove it to you - magnetism's my speciality." "Last week," said Drew sweetly, as he filled two glasses of ale at once, "You said that crystal structure was your speciality." Harry gave him a superior smile. "I'm a _general_ specialist," he said loftily.ï-Arthur C. Clarke, "Tales from the White Hart"ïøAs Captain Edgar Lightfoot piloted the 'copter back to Washington, D.C. one of the two captured Fnools said, "How is it that no matter what guise we come in, you terrans always detect us? We've appeared on your planet as filling station attendants, Volkswagen gear inspectors, chess champions, folk singers complete with native instruments, minor government officials, and now real-estate salesmen--" Lightfoot said, "It's your size." "That concept conveys nothing to us." "You're only two feet tall!"ï)Philip K. Dick, "The War with the Fnools"ïƒIf debugging is the process by which errors are removed from a program, then programming is the process by which they are built in.ïAnonï+A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: "You cannot fix a machine by just power- cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong." Knight turned the machine off and on. The machine worked.ïAI Koan (from the Jargon File)ï5A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating his morning meal. "I would like to give you this personality test", said the outsider, "because I want you to be happy." Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the toaster, saying: "I wish the toaster to be happy, too."ïAI Koan (from the Jargon File)ïíIn any case, in jargon the word [bug] almost never refers to insects. Here is a plausible conversation that never actually happened: "There is a bug in this ant farm!" "What do you mean? I don't see any ants in it." "That's the bug."ïthe Jargon FileïAFOO /foo/ 1. /interj./ Term of disgust. 2. Used very generally as a sample name for absolutely anything, esp. programs and files (esp. scratch files). 3. First on the standard list of metasyntactic variables used in syntax examples. See also bar, baz, qux, quux, corge, grault, garply, waldo, fred, plugh, xyzzy, thud.ïthe Jargon Fileï/BASIC /bay'-sic/ /n./ [acronym: Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code] A programming language, originally designed for Dartmouth's experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which has since become the leading cause of brain damage in proto-hackers. Edsger W. Dijkstra observed in "Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective" that "It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."ïthe Jargon FileïNNever attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.ïHanlon's RazorïOHow shall we define recursion? The old (old, old) joke is "Recursion: See recursion." This is a stinking lie. The correct definition is "Recursion: If you already know what recursion is, just remember the answer. Otherwise, find someone who is standing closer to Douglas Hofstadter than you are; then ask him or her what recursion is."ï!Andrew Plotkin, "Lists and Lists"ïÅOnly the fool would take trouble to verify that his sentence was composed of ten a's, three b's, four c's, four d's, forty-six e's, sixteen f's, four g's, thirtees h's, fifteen i's, two k's, nine l's, four m's, twenty-five n's, twenty-four o's, five p's, sixteen r's, forty-one s's, thirty- seven t's, ten u's, eight v's, eight w's, four x's, eleven y's, twenty-seven commas, twenty- three apostrophes, seven hyphens, and, last but not least, a single !ï Lee Sallowsï['T' is the first, fourth, eleventh, sixteenth, twenty-fourth, twenty-ninth, thirty-third...ï J. K. AronsonïŽHave you ever watched a cat walk through the grass? At times it halts, with one paw raised, and calls out. Is there a reason for these sounds?ïNavarthïcTo form a society based on class differences, a population of two is both necessary and sufficient.ïBaron BodisseyïÆ'"The Motione-Picture They Could Not Banne!"', read Bezam hesitantly. '"A Scorching Adventure In the White-Hotte Dawne of A New Continont! A Mann and a Womann Throne Together in the Wherl- pool of a World Gone Madde!! STARING **Delores De Syn** as The Woman and **Victor Maraschino** as Cohen the Barbarian!!! THRILS! ADVENTURE!! ELEPHANTS!!! Cominge Soone to A Pit nr. You!!!!"' He read it again. 'Who's Staring Delores De Syn?' he said, suspiciously.ï"Terry Pratchett, "Moving Pictures"